When Will Robots Become as Common as Smartphones?

Podcast

September 09, 2016

Will Allen, HP Fellow at HP Labs, joins The Robotics Trends Show to discuss why robots are arriving late in our homes and what needs to change to find more than the occasional robot vacuum in the home.

Home robots are late to the game. Besides the occasional cleaning robot and robot lawnmower, most homes are devoid of robots.

It’s become an annual prediction to declare the coming year the time the home-robot revolution finally hits, taking those boring domestic tasks off our plates.

This will, of course, eventually happen, but several things need to change between now and then.

Allen and I discuss some of the biggest challenges facing home robots, including couches and refrigerators, what robots (besides those that clean) will play a major role in the home, and some of the megatrends that will drive home robot adoption.

Allen also shares a couple non-endearing stories about robot vacuums - neither has anything to do with dogs - that show there’s still much-need improvement in how humans and robots interact.

In the podcast, Allen references a couple videos that show HP Labs tinkering with robots. Are these previews of what HP is working on? We’ll have to wait and see, but both of those videos can be found at the bottom of this page.

See Will Allen Live at RoboBusiness:

Our houses and offices are surprisingly devoid of robots. Learn why and learn what must change so we can find more than the occasional telepresence “robot” in the workplace and find more than the occasional vacuum robot in the home. Key enabling technologies are sufficient, yet solutions are sparse. It seems the bottlenecks are well understood. Join us as we look to the past for insights to guide our efforts to unleash the latent invasions of robots into all parts of our lives.

Takeaway 1: Practical robotic solutions in homes and offices late in arriving
Takeaway 2: Enabling technologies are sufficient today
Takeaway 3: Impediments identified in workflows and in scaling of solutions